I'm the founder of Millennial Branding, a Gen-Y research and management consulting firm. I also wrote the #1 international bestselling book, Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, now in 13 languages. My second book, Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success, will be released in 2013 by St. Martins Press. I've been featured in over 500 media outlets, including Wired and ELLE magazines. I've also written for BusinessWeek, CNN International, TIME, The Wall Street Journal and several other national outlets. I speak on topics such as Gen-Y workforce management, personal branding, social media, and career development for companies such as Google, Time Warner, IBM, and CitiGroup. In 2010, I was named to the Inc. Magazine 30 Under 30 List, and BusinessWeek cited me as someone entrepreneurs should follow on Twitter.

Hire For Attitude

Mark Murphy is the author Hiring for Attitude, as well as the bestsellers Hundred Percenters and HARD Goals. The founder and CEO of Leadership IQ, a top-rated provider of cutting-edge research and leadership training, Mark has personally provided guidance to more than 100,000 leaders from virtually every industry and half the Fortune 500. His public leadership seminars, custom corporate training, and online training programs have yielded remarkable results for companies including MicrosoftMicrosoft, IBMIBM, GE, MasterCardMasterCard, MerckMerck, AstraZenecaAstraZeneca, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and Johns Hopkins.

In this interview, Mark talks about why so many new hires fail so quickly, why soft skills are so important now, how the hiring landscape is changing, and more.

Why do so many fail within the first 18 months of taking a job?

When our research tracked 20,000 new hires, 46% of them failed within 18 months. But even more surprising than the failure rate, was that when new hires failed, 89% of the time it was for attitudinal reasons and only 11% of the time for a lack of skill. The attitudinal deficits that doomed these failed hires included a lack of coachability, low levels of emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament.

Are technical and soft skills less important than attitude? Why?

It’s not that technical skills aren’t important, but they’re much easier to assess (that’s why attitude, not skills, is the top predictor of a new hire’s success or failure). Virtually every job (from neurosurgeon to engineer to cashier) has tests that can assess technical proficiency. But what those tests don’t assess is attitude; whether a candidate is motivated to learn new skills, think innovatively, cope with failure, assimilate feedback and coaching, collaborate with teammates, and so forth.

Soft skills are the capabilities that attitude can enhance or undermine. For example, a newly hired executive may have the intelligence, business experience and financial acumen to fit well in a new role. But if that same executive has an authoritarian, hard-driving style, and they’re being hired into a social culture where happiness and camaraderie are paramount, that combination is unlikely to work. Additionally, many training programs have demonstrated success with increasing and improving skills—especially on the technical side. But these same programs are notoriously weak when it comes to creating attitudinal change. As Herb Kelleher, former Southwest Airlines CEO used to say, “we can change skill levels through training, but we can’t change attitude.”

How will the hiring landscape be different in 2012 and beyond?

Between the labor pool from China and India and the fact that there are so many workers sitting out there unemployed, we can find the skills we need. The lack of sharp wage increases in most job categories is further evidence of the abundant supply of skills. Technical proficiency, once a guarantee of lifetime employment, is a commodity in today’s job market. Attitude is what today’s companies are hiring for. And not just any attitude; companies want attitudes that perfectly match their unique culture. Google and Apple are both great companies, but their cultures are as different as night and day.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

Your observation is just too funny! Just imagine the results if the scientists in the space program had been hired solely for attitude rather than skill! They might have landed Armstrong and colleagues in Newfoundland and then told them they were on the moon!

Wait a minute – now I get it – that is how organizations that hire primarily for attitude rather than skill operate – they’ve got a bunch of incompetent, vacant eye, smiling baboons in all the senior management roles (who were all hired for attitude rather than skill) telling each other what they want to hear – and then scratching their heads wondering why the shareholders and regulators are head-hunting (in a literal rather than a hiring sense)!

As a Staffing Solutions expert, I can tell you that we readily utilize social media sites for sourcing. We still utilize job boards as well, to make sure we are getting a broad range of candidates, but Social Media is definitely a great additional tool for recruiters. (it also doesn’t hurt that sourcing through social media gives you a peek into their “Social Media Persona”, which can tell you a lot about the candidate’s attitude. http://www.staffing-solutions.biz/executive-recruiters.html

I use an interview system where the questions require the candidate to describe actual situations. It is from these ‘stories’ of how the candidate behaved that I can assess a candidates ‘attitude.’ The attitudinal deficits listed reveal themselves through a candidate’s behavior. So, ask your candidate what they DID, vs. what they THOUGHT, what they will DO, vs. what they THINK. Because, when the candidate is an employee, you will be dealing with their behavior expressing their attitude.

There is no doubt that many new hires fail becasue of their attitude. From a managerial perspective, these are often termed “problem employees”. However, if one digs some more maybe the new employees expectations have not been met? Maybe there is a problem organizationally? Engaging employees once they join an organization is important. Often when something is new, like a job, an employee will be excited but over time their passion diminishes either from being in the same role too long or for some other reason.

Attitude is not something you can see or even measure in an interview. Any interviewee today knows the answers to the common situational or behavioral interview questions.

Even references for fear of legal action from former employees will give good reviews.

I do believe given the same skill set and experience, attitude does make a difference. No one wants to hire negative people because they will be as a disease to the team. However, positive people make positive contributions.

My friends over at SBR consulting here in London once explained this to me : To a pilot ‘Attitude’ is the way the plane is leaning with respect to the horizon. Sometimes the plane takes an attitude caused by external events – turbulence, wind shear, weather. These external events are outside the pilot’s control, and happen to some extent during almost every flight. In almost every case, the pilot is able to take corrective measures which restore the plane to the position he or she wants it to be in. If a pilot does not have the belief and confidence he or she can right the situation, they should not be a pilot.

Like pilots, everyone – both our clients and prospects, and we as “sales professionals” – have many things happen during the day that are beyond our control. Some are potentially good, that they didn’t do anything to deserve. They just happened.

Some are potentially bad, that they ALSO didn’t do anything to deserve. They just happened as well.

What counts more than anything is the direction we choose to LEAN, with respect to the things that happen to us.

Many people say it all depends upon whether a person is positive or negative in their outlook.

It is far more effective to speak about optimism than about being positive. As Professor Martin Seligman has determined and reported on in his book, Learned Optimism¸optimism goes well beyond ‘being positive.’ A person with a positive attitude just believes a situation will turn out all right.

The person with an optimistic attitude believes a situation will turn out all right because he or she can personally influence the outcome. Because there are specific things a person can do – even in the face of immense obstacles and challenges – the optimist feels a far greater sense of control and effectiveness. Dr. Seligman and other researchers have proven that optimistic “salespeople” stay with their firms longer, and are more successful in selling.

Is such, an attitude something with which one is born, which some people have and some people do not?

Without question, disposition, upbringing, and environment all influence whether people are fundamentally optimistic or pessimistic. But as Dr. Seligman and many others have proven, optimism can be learnt…… It can be developed in people.

It makes an organisation wishing to develop business far more effective.

“But even more surprising than the failure rate, was that when new hires failed, 89% of the time it was for attitudinal reasons and only 11% of the time for a lack of skill. The attitudinal deficits that doomed these failed hires included a lack of coachability, low levels of emotional intelligence, motivation and temperament.”

This is surprising to most, yet true. From the research I’ve seen, up to 85 percent of success in business and life is due to emotional intelligence. Thanks for the great article.

I agree. In my experience successful employees possess four golden nuggets, each clearly demonstrated during the interview process.These candidates are PACTful. They have a Professional appearance, a great Attitude, solid Communication skills, and Technical know-how to do the job.

What does it say about the emotional maturity of an organization when it is easily disrupted by an individual with a bad attitude? Aren’t we taught as children that the world is full of all kinds of people and we must learn to get along with them? Why does corporate recruiting consider itself an exception to this grown-up thinking? Maybe if recruiters focused as much on hiring talent with thicker skin as they do on candidates with the perfect emotional complexion then the organizational gene pool would be enriched that much more. Even people with less than ideal attitudes can contribute to mission success in valuable ways. Not acknowledging that is childish.

Great blog! I totally agree with the views above that emotional intelligence is at the heart of this issue. We need a fundamental rethink of how we educate young people at school, further and higher education so that they develop the EQ needed to build and maintain relationships in the workplace and beyond.

Attitude is all about people. How can we expect people to manage others if they can’t manage themselves?